1,721,038 research outputs found
Between feminine singular and neuter plural: Re-analysis patterns
No full textStarting from the investigation of some neuter o stems that attest either masculine or
feminine doublets in Latin, this paper discusses the development of the thematic neuter
and its status within the Latin gender system. Thematic neuters may be regarded as one
of the latest innovations in the Indo-European family, and most of them developed
independently within the individual languages. Latin evidence shows in fact that some
neuter o stems were created at a historical stage from ancient masculines of the same
inflectional class. Particular attention is paid here to a set of nouns exhibiting
fluctuations between a second-declension neuter o stem and a first-declension feminine a
stem. These gender variations throw light on a progressive change of gender, and a
detailed chronological examination actually reveals that all these forms are originally
feminine nouns re-analysed as thematic neuters – an evolutionary pattern that is the
opposite of what is currently assumed. This gender change can be related to the
diachronic development of a number of morpho-syntactic patterns, which may have
favoured such a re-analysis and which might have led to the genesis of these thematic
neuters as a pure inner-Latin phenomenon
Sistemi di codifica argomentale : tipologia ed evoluzione
No full textPer chiunque parli e studi lingue europee contemporanee o antiche, le categorie di soggetto e oggetto sono tanto intuitive da apparire universali e immutabili. In realtà, tale distinzione è solo uno dei sistemi attraverso cui le lingue del mondo codificano la struttura del nucleo predicativo della frase. Il volume introduce ai problemi posti dalla variazione tipologica e dal mutamento diacronico nella codifica degli argomenti del predicato. Da un lato, offre un saggio di tutti i sistemi attualmente noti; dall’altro, ricostruisce l’articolato percorso che ha condotto dalle strutture argomentali del latino arcaico a quelle delle lingue romanze
The development of deverbal prepositions in Latin: morpho-syntactic and semantico-pragmatic factors
No full textThis paper investigates the development of a few Latin deverbal prepositions, whose sources are both present and perfect participles occurring in non-finite adverbial clauses. The category shift under examination may be described as a typical case of transcategorization, and is discussed here in line with the ‘non-discreteness hypothesis of the Parts-of-Speech’. Traditionally, the development of deverbal prepositions is taken to involve a cluster of factors. The working hypothesis presented here is that not just a cluster of factors, but two separate dimensions play a role in this change. Transcategorization cannot be predicted from language-specific features alone, but is subject to precise semantico-pragmatic conditions, which can ultimately be identified with the universal properties of verbs. Finally, the
actual distribution of the deverbal prepositions in question is explained in the light of sociolinguistic and stylistic variation
Recensione a Harm Pinkster (2015), The Oxford Latin Syntax. Volume 1: The Simple Clause, Oxford University Press, Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-928361-3, pp. I-XXXIV, 1-1430.
No full textRecensione a Harm Pinkster (2015), The Oxford Latin Syntax. Volume 1: The Simple Clause, Oxford University Press, Oxford, ISBN 978-0-19-928361-3, pp. I-XXXIV, 1-1430
L'estensione dell'accusativo in latino tardo e medievale
No full textTraditional papers on extended accusative are based either on the semantics or
on the syntax of the predicate. In my analysis, I will start from the semantics of the
noun which acts as a subject, with particular attention to the category of animacy,
trying to set a single parameter which can explain both accusative extention and the
rare cases of nominative maintenance. This will allow me also to reconsider the
status of the -as nominatives
Recensione a "James Clackson (2011, ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language"
No full textRecensione del volume: James Clackson (2011, ed.), A Companion to the Latin Language,
Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester/Malden (MA), ISBN 978-1-4051-8605-6,
pp. I-XXVI, 1-634, £ 132.00 / € 158,40
I nominativi plurali in -e(i)s della seconda declinazione. Costituzione di una classe morfologica
No full textIn Latin epigraphic sources, a morpheme -e(i)s is sometimes attested as the
plural nominative of masculine -o stems. Currently labelled as «irregular», this
morpheme is rather a prototypically-structured morphological category, whose members
share both formal and semantic features, although at different degrees. The development
of this category is here explained in the framework of «lexical
connectionism». Finally, an hypothesis is put forward on the origin of this morpheme,
which probably arose in a bilingual Oscan/Latin context
Notes on the inscriptions of Delos: the Greek transliteration of Latin names
No full textBetween the 2nd and 1st century BC the island of Delos was the destination of a massive immigration of freemen, freedmen, and slaves coming from Italy for economic purposes. As a consequence, a large amount of Latin onomastic material is preserved in the Greek-written inscriptions. This paper analyses the accommodation of the Latin names into the Greek orthography, trying to illustrate the complex overlap of different criteria of transliteration: the graphemic correspondences and the phonetically-based transcriptions entailing Latin speech, Greek speech, and Greek-Latin bilingual speech. The investigation will focus in particular on the phonetic value of Latin short i and u. Finally, some alleged Sabellic features will be discussed, calling their relevance into question
Mutamento ed entropia. Un approccio informazionale ai processi di grammaticalizzazione
No full textIl presente contributo intende proporre un modello di analisi linguistica che consenta di tradurre in un valore numerico quantificabile categorie qualitative e intrinsecamente scalari come quelle di grammaticalizzazione e lessicalizzazione. La funzione dell’entropia, mutuata dalla Teoria dell’Informazione, appare in grado di assolvere a tale compito, mediante l’istituzione di un nesso esplicito tra una nozione intuitiva come l’informazione e un dato empiricamente rilevabile come la frequenza
Manifestazioni di sub-sistemi tipologici attivi in latino
No full textIn active coding systems, case-marking is semantically grounded, i.e. it marks the opposition between the two semantic macroroles: Actor and Undergoer. In Late Latin, the so-called extended accusative reveals the existence of an active syntactic sub-system. In this paper, I will try to show that the same pattern operates in Early Latin, as reflected by the distribution of two nominal allomorphs
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